How hard is Russian grammar compared to English grammar?
Wednesday, March 17th, 2010 at
6:10 pm
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I am trying to teach myself Russian and I know that Russian grammar is very hard. How hard is it compared to English? Is it harder or less hard? Thanks for your help! =)
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I would say it is significantly harder, due to the different cases, and therefore the different endings used in words, which can change due to gender, number, or case declension.
The nominative case answers the questions "who?/what?". The Russian Nominative is the basic form found in dictionaries for nouns, and is the SUBJECT of the sentence.
The accusative case designates the direct object of an action. (I speak Russian. Russian, in this sentence is the direct object.)
The genitive case refers to things belonging to other people. Just like when you use (of) or (the possessive ‘s)
The dative case refers to things given or addressed to a person (indirect object). (I gave the letter (D.O.) to Jane (I.O.)
The instrumental case is used to refer to an instrument that helps to make something. It is also used when you become something. In Russian, saying, "Maybe I will become a painter," would put the word painter into the instrumental.
The prepositional case is used after the prepositions “о” (about), “в” (in), “на” (at) to refer to a place. It is sometimes known as the locative case.
There is obviously a lot more that goes into it, but that should give you a small idea on how it is different.
Now, having said that, for me, it was difficult at first, but after a while, declining the words just becomes second nature. You also just have to get used to the flow of the Slavic languages. It sounds quite different from English.
It is a beautiful language that is a lot of fun to learn, so I would say try it out, and don’t get discouraged too easily. Learning any language is difficult.
Всего Хорошего!
MUCH harder! All the sexes, tenses, and directions have to agree. And Russian has tenses that do not even exist in English.
For example, in Russian, "The man bites the dog," and "The dog bites the man" is exactly the same. Things change from the endings. You have: Man(receiving action) action dog(doing action). So, you do not need to worry about subject/verb/object order as much, but everything else is tough.
I knew some Russian linguists. Curious, I asked for some basic swearing phrases. I have up trying to learn any – it was much to difficult!
It’s not harder, just different. People who say it’s harder only think so because they know English grammar already. To Russians, English grammar is hard.
Edit: This is a pretty typical misconception of people who don’t study languages. They look at a language that’s very different from their native language and they think "wow, that’s so complicated – how could anybody ever learn that?" And yet, 5 year-olds learn it routinely. All languages are of roughly equal complexity. Have you ever listened to a Russian struggle with "the" and "a/an" or try to figure out the difference between "I’d been going" and "I was going"? Russian, for example, actually has fewer marked tenses than English, but the problem is that if you haven’t studied English grammar as an adult, you probably don’t have any idea how many tenses English actually has (12 plus some less formally defined ones). You just use them without thinking about it.